14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwan-based mobile phone maker HTC Corporation, the largest vendor of smartphones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system and also the first manufacturer to have launched on the market a device powered by Google's Android platform, is reportedly gearing up for the release of a Brew MP-based device. The upcoming phone should be launched sometime in early 2010, as it has been pushed back from the end of 2009, it seems.
According to a recent post on DigiTimes, industry sources say that the handset maker decided to delay the original planned launch window for the high-end feature handsets that it planned on bringing to the market with Qualcomm's Brew Mobile Platform on board. Many of you might have learned before that HTC planned to launch a phone under the OS, and you might already know that the said device is expected to reach the US market via wireless carrier Sprint.
“The delays were caused by the Brew's relatively immature application service platform offering for telecom carriers, said the sources, noting that Qualcomm is currently cooperating with a number of mobile software developers to work on dedicated applications for the Brew platform including a Java virtual machine, customized wed browser, mobile community services, multimedia management and GPS services, among others,” DigiTimes notes.
According to the news site, the sources also said that the first Brew MP-based handsets were expected to become available via Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, which is in line with what was rumored before. Indeed, Qualcomm announced recently that it was working with a wide range of software developers for the building of applications for its OS, yet no details on when the first Brew phones will reach the market have been unveiled, nor on the handset maker that will deliver them to the market. Since HTC is the most plausible choice, we should expect for an official announcement to emerge in the near future.